


Who are you to tell me how to keep myself afloat?

by AliceInKinkland



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Dehumanization, HYDRA Trash Party, Humiliation, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Watersports, but not in a fun way, like kinda...that's the closest tag I can find
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 19:22:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15395694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceInKinkland/pseuds/AliceInKinkland
Summary: This is called weakness. No, this is called resistance. No, this is called futility.





	Who are you to tell me how to keep myself afloat?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna be honest, this one has been sitting in my google docs for a while as I tried to decide if I wanted it to see the light of day or not. I don't honestly know how I feel about the fact that I've written this? But it looks like my desire for external validation has officially overruled my sense of shame and discomfort with the fact that my brain came up with this, so, uh, here's hoping I won't regret posting it? 
> 
> Title from "Gun" by Chvrches--the full stanza is: "Who are you to tell me how/To keep myself afloat?/I tread the water all the while/You stuck in the knife/That you held at my back"
> 
> All the mentions of graphic violence here are in flashbacks or fantasies--I put the warning in there to be on the safe side, but there's no graphic gore on-screen, so to speak (there's just a whole lot of other horrible things)

He can only make sense of the pain he’s been in by its absence a moment later.

One second, there is white-hot oblivion, and the next, a hollow, raw space opens up inside him where agony used to crowd it out. Instinctively he revels in it, the opportunity for coherent thought. He is suddenly aware of his breath, shallow but uniform: the in-out, in-out of his continued existence.

More sensations begin to trickle in. Pressure on his chest, thighs, ankles, skull. Pressure on his wrists, too, but a different quality to each side--different strength, different material. Something firm but with some slight degree of give rests between his teeth, tasting like a moment he can’t pin down. Rubber, he thinks, is the word for the taste, but the more he focuses on the language of it the more that shadow of sense memory disintegrates.

In its place, he notices the cold of the air around him. His clammy skin prickles with it, but he sits in a wet and pleasant patch of warmth. Clothing covers his legs, blocking some of the cold, but his upper body and feet are bare.

Words come to him for the smells, then, trickling in as he begins to breathe more deeply: sweat, blood, disinfectant, ozone. Something sharp, the concept just on the tip of his tongue. He gags, although some ghost of panic tells him not to. He stops, but something has shifted around him.

“Look, he’s awake,” says a voice, familiar the way the taste of rubber is. So many fleeting knowledges. Is he supposed to know this more solidly than he does? Or is the fact that he knows this even halfway something to be corrected?

The Asset opens his eyes.

One door. No windows, judging by the play of the light--harsh fluorescents only, no strip of sun falling on any of the green-tiled walls, the shadows shaped only by the bulbs pointing at his body. Five others in the room, all male, three in black tactical gear, one in a white coat, one in scrubs the same cold green as the walls. He remembers, now, where he is, but he knows in a way that lives beyond language. For a moment, he thinks he will scream. Then he pulls himself down into the numbness of compliance.

The man in a white coat--a doctor, the Asset’s brain supplies--snaps his fingers in front of the Asset’s face. He jerks his head upwards in response. Saliva drips from his lips down to his chin at the movement.

The man in scrubs busies himself with a clipboard. There is a routine here, the Asset knows, but he does not remember enough of the steps to find comfort in this promise of order.

The doctor reaches towards the Asset’s left eye, and for a moment the Asset thinks this man will yank it out of its socket. The Asset himself has done that to someone else once, he’s pretty sure, or maybe more than once: sense memory of an eyeball popping between metal fingers. An empty satisfaction left behind, gaping deep, thick red.

But the doctor simply holds his eyelids apart and shines a light on first one pupil, then the other. He holds up fingers, and the Asset follows them with his eyes, up and down, left and right. He sinks into smooth inevitability, the ache of the familiar unfamiliar.

“Wait, is that—yeah, look, he fucking pissed himself!”

The doctor glances down, then nods to the man who has spoken, one of the men in tactical gear. “So he has,” he says. A half-smile dances on his lips. “Well. Vitals are fine, response times normal, all autonomic processes within expected post-procedure ranges.” He gestures to the clipboard, and the man holding it nods. “I’ll drop the paperwork off on my way out. I’ll leave you to it, then, gentlemen.”

The Asset looks down at himself as the doctor grabs the clipboard and walks out of the room. Sure enough, he can see a dark patch has bloomed between his legs. An anomaly. That must be the comforting warmth he felt as he emerged from the agony of the wipe procedure. It must be the smell, too, the one he wasn’t able to place before.

“That’s just like doctors around here,” says one of the men in tactical gear--Strike Team, supplies the Asset’s brain, but he can’t quite remember any more than that. “These guys, they poke around a bit, write a bunch of notes, and then leave the rest to us, and for that they still get hazard pay.”

“Can’t really blame them this time,” says another of the Strike Team men, the one who first spoke, first noticed the Asset’s deviation from expected protocol. “I sure as hell don’t want to have to get this mess cleaned up.”

“It makes sense, though,” says the man in sickly-green scrubs. He looks like the youngest of the four still in the room, and he holds himself like he wants to be bigger than he is. 

The wet patch the Asset is sitting in is cooling now, no longer a comfort in the cold air of the room. It itches, just slightly, wet fabric clinging to the Asset’s ass and thighs. He shifts, and feels liquid run further down his legs, soak tendrils of damp into the still-dry areas of his pants. This event, this bodily process, means something--the tone of the room has been different ever since it was noticed.

“What do you mean, it makes sense?”

The young man in scrubs gestures with his hand at the Asset, or perhaps at the whole apparatus surrounding him, chair and spotlights and wipe machine and monitoring equipment. “I mean, lots of people piss themselves when their bodies are overwhelmed. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often during things like this. Or does it? I know I’m still new here.”

The third man in tactical gear, silent until now, snorts. “Is that coming from personal experience?”

“No, fuck you, man! All I’m saying is, pain, fear--it can make your body, well, do that.”

Shame. That is what this event means to these men. This act--pissing himself from the pain of the wipe procedure, his body giving out out while his mind was far away--is a shameful one. To have done it is humiliating.

The Asset will not be afforded dignity in this regardless of whether he feels the indignity as such. But now that he has parsed its meaning, he cannot return to registering his bodily sensations purely as dispassionate observations. Now, he is stuck with something hopelessly human squirming inside him, a sudden awareness of the wrongness of his position: sitting immobilized in a pool of his own piss.

“You spend a lot of time thinking about people pissing themselves?” says the first Strike Team man.

The second man laughs. “Maybe he’s into it.”

The young man in scrubs scowls. His shoulders are tense, his fingers shaking. He would be easy to catch off guard, if he were a target. “Fuck all of you! Never mind! I’m just saying, that’s all.”

“Why don’t you deal with him, if you know so much about this?” says the third man.

“No, that’s not what I’m—”

“Great! Sounds good. We’ll just head on out, then, call it a day.”

The man is scrubs’ eyes are wide, body stiff. “You can’t leave me alone with him!”

The first man smiles. “Relax! He just got wiped, he’s docile. I mean, look at him! Doesn’t even know he’s peed his goddamn pants. And we won’t really go home, we’ll just head to the break room. We’ll still hear you if you scream. Probably.” He barks out a laugh, and the others join in.

“I don’t even know what to do with him, come on, guys.”

“Just clean him up, clean up the chair, stick him in the freezer. Three things. Think you can remember that?”

The skin of the Asset’s cock chafes where it presses against the piss-soaked crotch of his pants. He wonders vaguely how much longer he’ll sit here before he’s given the chance to get clean again. Once he is in the freezing chamber he will be temporarily unstuck from time, but he is not there yet.

The man in scrubs bites his lip. “It’s not the protocol. What if someone finds out?”

“You’re a junior lab tech. It’s the protocol if we say it’s the protocol. And hey, if you prove you can handle him here, maybe we’ll invite you to other times we handle him, if you catch my meaning. Bet you’ve heard about that, right?”

The man in scrubs closes his eyes, opens them, and nods. “Fine. Whatever. If I fucking die, don’t tell my wife it was from cleaning up when some homicidal science experiment wet himself.”

The first man claps him on the back. “I like you, kid.” Then the three of them file out, laughing as they go.

The man takes a deep breath and approaches the Asset. He runs his hands along the controls to the chair. His hand lands on a small blue button, and the Asset has a flash of memory: the button being pressed, his restraints unlocking. The Asset is tired. The man holds his finger over the button, then removes it. He stares at the Asset, a comprehensive assessment, taking in his bound limbs, his soaked pants, his face. The Asset keeps his eyes lowered, but he can still follow the man’ gaze.

“I can’t fucking believe them,” says the man. 

If the man were a target, the Asset would press his flesh palm to the man’ mouth, muffling any sounds he might make. Then he would wrap metal fingers around the man’s neck and squeeze until his pulse stopped fluttering and his thrashing limbs stilled. He would let him fall to the ground, then, broken. He would be competent and unrestrained for as long as the mission lasted. 

“Do you know what I’m saying? If I speak to you?” The man is waving a hand in front of the Asset’s face.

The Asset nods.

“So if I tell you not to kill me, you won’t?” Nervous laughter. Weakness after weakness, but it changes nothing.

The Asset nods again.

“Good,” says the man. “I have one of these, just in case. So don’t try anything.” He holds up a stun baton, and the Asset flinches.

The man presses the button, and the restraints retract into the chair. The Asset remains still, awaiting instructions. The cold dampness he sits in feels like it is seeping into him, deep as programming, so different from the sleepy kind of icy comfort of being frozen and packed away.

Some people would use the baton on the Asset now, before they ordered him to do anything. Some would probably take advantage of the puddle beneath him in order to better conduct the shock. But the man just snaps his fingers and says, “Get up, then.”

The Asset feels his own cold piss run down his legs as he rises. It drips from the hems of his pants onto his feet and down to pool on the floor. Sometimes after a wipe the Asset is so disoriented that he can barely stand, let alone remember the things about bodies that people are embarrassed about. Sometimes the freezing chamber is right there afterwards, and he does not have to do anything but comply as he is led inside to rest.

“Come on,” says the man. He leads the Asset out of the room into a bright-white hallway with pipes running along the ceiling, and the Asset is hit with the knowledge that he has been here before, too many times to count or even to disentangle. One time, one of the lights along the wall was smashed as he walked by it, sparks flying like fireworks, like miniature close-range missiles, like synapses flowing through an altered mind. The Asset feels the chafe of his wet pants against his skin with each step. 

Maybe the Asset smashed the light, that time he’s half-remembering.

The man stops in front of a door. Inside is another tiled room, smaller and emptier than the room with the chair. The memory that hits the Asset here is blood flowing off matted hair, coursing towards the drain sunk into the floor. Lighter and pinker the closer it got, the more water was applied.

“Strip and get inside,” says the man. He gestures at the room with his baton. 

The Asset peels his soaking pants off his body. Underneath, his underwear, too, are drenched, and he pulls those down as well. The cool air is a welcome change from the cling of wet, stinking fabric. He picks up the clothes and holds them out to the man.

“Don’t--fuck, I should have had you take them off in the other room,” says the man. He looks around as though expecting to see more than an empty hallway. “Uh, just leave them on the ground, I guess,” he says finally. “And get the fuck in there. This is not why I took this job. You know? This had better net me an invite to one of these parties they’ve apparently got going, is all I’m saying.”

The Asset sets the clothes down. They leave a residue on his hands, a concept he is used to in general.

“Stand there,” says the man. He has a hose in his hands. The Asset stands where he is told. He barely flinches when the cold of the water hits, although it does hurt, sharp and vital like a belt against skin. If this coldness were the cold of the freezing chamber, it would hurt just like this, yes--but everything would fade out after a few moments.

Nothing fades now. The water is relentless, so highly pressurized that it it feels like tiny pellets striking his hips and cock and thighs. The man guides the water down each leg and then back up again. The Asset has to stop himself from moving his hands between his legs to shield himself from the onslaught. 

If this man were a target, the Asset could wrap the hose around his neck and squeeze. Or he could use the water itself as a weapon: shove the hose down the man’s throat, block his airways, turn on the spray. Or he could beat him with the metal nozzle; slower, but it would get the job done eventually.

“Turn around, bend over,” says the man. Every time he speaks his authority sounds a bit more genuine, a bit less terrified. The Asset complies, gripping hands to ankles. 

The man sends the spray in a similar path once again, up the back of one leg and down the other. At the height of the arc, he runs the the jet of water up and down the crack between the Asset’s slightly-parted ass cheeks, catches the back of his balls with a burst of angry cold, and then does it again, and again. The Asset stares at the water pooling around his feet and racing towards the drain. There is enough depth to the water now that he could drown the man here, face pressed to the tiles, if the water just kept flowing.

Finally, it stops. The Asset holds still. He is panting through his nose, the rubber gag still held dutifully in his mouth, and it sounds loud in the silence of the room, now that the hose is turned off.

There are faint noises behind him, the man’s boots across the wet tiles, the click of the hose being returned to its socket on the wall. 

“Turn around, come here,” says the man. The Asset steals a glance at him as he walks over. There is something the man wants to say, but does not. If he says nothing, this may be nearing an end. They may be nearing the time when the Asset can rest.

The man opens his mouth. The Asset eyes his wet trousers and underwear, still piled haphazardly on the floor. Maybe the man will not let him go into the freezing chamber until he cleans that up, that and the seat of the wipe chair, and all the little droplets that fell onto the floor as they walked down the hallway, and—

“Is it true? Do they really fuck you?”

The Asset should have expected that. 

The Asset cannot lie. The Asset cannot be ignorant of what the question is asking. But, mercifully, the Asset cannot talk, not with the gag still lodged in his mouth. The Asset stares at the man, no particular expression on his face. This is called weakness. No, this is called resistance. No, this is called futility.

“Shit, you still have that thing in? Take it out,” says the man. The Asset spits the gag into his flesh hand. He holds it out to the man, but the man gestures at the pile of clothes, so the Asset drops the gag on top of them, still slick with his saliva. He returns to stand in front of the man.

“Open your mouth,” says the man, “and don’t bite.” The Asset complies. The man sticks two fingers in the Asset’s mouth. “Now suck, that’s right. Show me what you’ve got. Show me what I’ve been missing out on, holed up in the lab, huh?”

The man’s skin tastes of latex gloves and antibacterial soap. The Asset laves the man’s fingers with his tongue, carefully keeping his teeth from scraping against any part of the intruding digits, even when the man pushes them further back, scratching at the Asset’s soft palate with his fingernails. When this is over, the Asset will--most likely--be put in the freezing chamber, and then he will not have anything to be for a while, and when he is woken up again it will be with a mission, a target, a purpose.

“OK,” says the man, “OK, so you do know how to--you’re not gonna hurt me, are you? Fuck, I get why the guys do this, it’s a thrill, the danger, you know? OK. OK, I’m gonna do this. OK. Kneel.”

The tiles are cold and unyielding beneath the Asset’s knees and calves. The man undoes his pants. His cock is already hard, the tip shiny. Different bodily fluids, different people, different consequences. 

The man pries the Asset’s mouth open with his thumb, and pushes his cock past the Asset’s lips. This part of him tastes different than his fingers, a human muskiness, a spot not governed by the sanitary procedures of the lab. The man’s desire, the man’s razor-thin sliver of trust--in other circumstances these, too, would be weaknesses, but right now they are both born of a power that surrounds the Asset so thickly he might as well still be bound to the chair with machinery scrubbing at his mind. 

The man pushes further in, and the Asset relaxes his throat and presses his lips together. These acts are not conditioned into him the way so many of the things he is ordered to do are. Still, he has had enough practice that he knows roughly what to do, more memories trickling back to him as he gets to work.

If the man were a target, the Asset could bite down on the tender flesh of his cock, but that would not be the most effective way to take him out from this position. Better to use the man’s distraction to pin him on his back and then go for his throat. Or his chest: he’s still holding the stun baton, and prolonged use of that against an ordinary man’s heart, even a young man like this, would cause it to stop eventually.

The man’s thrusts speed up. He has wound his free hand into the Asset’s hair, damp from sweat and shower spray, and uses it to pull the Asset’s lips flush against the wiry hair at the base of his cock. The Asset gags, gets himself under control, then gags again. 

“Fuck, you’re so goddamn good at this, a little sloppy but that’s--fuck--yes, right there, I’m gonna blow my load so soon, I swear, and you’re just gonna take it, aren’t you, swallow it all down because I tell you to, because you’ll do whatever we tell you to—”

The Asset would grab the stun baton first, because then he could send the man sprawling to the ground with that alone. Look up into the man’s eyes just as he is doing now and hold his gaze, and the man would be so distracted he wouldn’t see the flash of metal out of the corner of his eye until it was too late. Then the Asset would kick his face in, climb on top of him, and— 

The man groans, stills, and spills down the Asset’s throat. The Asset cannot keep from spluttering as his throat and mouth fill with the man’s hot cum. A few rivulets dribble down his chin, but most of it he manages to swallow without even being reminded.

The man tucks himself back up. He is flushed, unsteady on his feet. His grip on the baton is looser now. He closes his eyes and sighs deeply before opening them once again.

The man does not fear him as much as he did before, not now that he has fucked his throat and kept all his extremities. The Asset can see the possibilities of this spin out before him--himself on hands and knees, cleaning up the mess he’d left earlier, hopefully with a mop and bucket but maybe with his tongue, and then maybe after that the man coming up behind him, a hardness pressed against his ass, another curiosity ready to be satisfied. The Asset feels hot. The Asset feels so, so far from the ice.

The Asset flexes his left arm, metal whirring as it shifts and then settles back into place. It looks intimidating, but it must be an idle gesture. The Asset does not have the kind of volition for it to be anything else in this circumstance; ask anyone.

The man’s eyes widen in alarm as they latch on to the movement. The Asset looks up at the man, face as blank as before. The haze of orgasm is gone from the man’s face. Perhaps he remembers, now, that the Asset is a weapon, and even well-made weapons can malfunction on occasion. 

Or perhaps he does not. Perhaps his facial expression means something else, or nothing at all.

“Get up,” says the man, and perhaps he flinches when the Assets flexes his metal arm again to help himself to his feet, but perhaps it is just a shiver in the cold air of the room. Regardless, the Asset stands in front of him, half clean and fully naked, ready to comply because he cannot be anything else, as anyone who knows about such things could confirm.

“Let’s get you into the freezing chamber,” says the man, and stomps out of the room. His grip on the baton is tight once again.

The Asset follows, bare feet slapping wetly against the concrete floor, and there is a lightness inside of him as he walks towards his rest.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://aliceinthinkland.tumblr.com)! Don't expect a lot of this kind of thing though!


End file.
